Jordan’s king urges ceasefire
JORDAN’S king urged the top US diplomat yesterday to push for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and an end to the humanitarian crisis brought by three months of war, the royal palace said.
King Abdullah II made the remarks to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is on a Middle East tour aiming to ensure the Israel-Hamas war does not spread. The war that began on October 7 with an attack against Israel by Gaza-based Hamas militants triggered relentless retaliatory bombardment by Israel, leaving Gazans desperately in need of humanitarian aid.
King Abdullah warned Blinken against “the catastrophic repercussions of continuation of the aggression against Gaza, underlining the necessity of ending the tragic humanitarian crisis”, a statement from the royal palace said.
The king reiterated “the important role of the US in bringing pressure for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, protection of civilians, and guaranteeing delivery” of medical and humanitarian aid.
Washington has twice exercised its veto at the UN Security Council over ceasefire calls, drawing outrage in the Arab world, and Blinken has bypassed Congress to rush weapons to Israel.
He and other US officials have, however, become increasingly vocal about the need for Israel to protect civilians in Gaza, where the Hamas-run health ministry says 22 835 people have been killed since October 7.
The war began with Hamas’s attack on Israel which resulted in the deaths of around 1 140 people, based on the latest official Israeli figures. Militants also took around 250 people hostage, 132 of whom remain captive, Israel says.
Blinken, who is seeking to get more aid into besieged Gaza, visited the World Food Programme’s regional co-ordination warehouse near the Jordanian capital. Inside the warehouse, stocked with canned food aid, the senior UN official in Jordan, Sheri Ritsema-Anderson, described the situation in Gaza as “catastrophic”.
Blinken said “it is imperative that we maximise assistance to people in need”, by getting the aid in and distributing it effectively. King Abdullah, whose country signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, also reaffirmed the need for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian question and underlined Jordan’s “total rejection” of any forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza or the occupied West Bank.
Washington also insists on a twostate solution, something rejected by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, some of whose cabinet members have called for Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza to leave.
Regional tensions have soared since last Tuesday when a strike in a Beirut stronghold of the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, a Hamas ally, killed Hamas’s deputy leader Saleh al-Aruri. A US Defense Department official has said that Israel carried out the strike.
Blinken arrived in Jordan from Turkey and Greece, where he said there is “real concern” over the Israel-Lebanon border, which even before the Aruri strike had seen regular exchanges of fire largely between Hezbollah and Israeli forces. “We want to do everything possible to make sure we don’t see an escalation,” Blinken said.
The EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell carried a similar message on a visit to Beirut on Saturday. “It is imperative to avoid regional escalation. It is absolutely necessary to avoid Lebanon being dragged into a regional conflict.”